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SUPRASEGMENTAL FEATURES
0. INTRODUCTION.
Connected speech can be divided into units called segments, which are usually
classified as vowels or consonants. A sequence like bed consists of three segments: [bed]
2 consonantal: [b] and [d] and a vocalic one: [e].
An adequate phonetic description would be incomplete and unsatisfactory if it does not
account for other characteristics accompanying segments that have a relevant meaningful
importance. These features are known as suprasegmental or prosodic elements. The most
important ones are pitch, loudness and length. (Cruttenden 2008: 51).
According to this author, pitch is the perception of fundamental frequency, the acoustic
manifestation of intonation (:270), while what is loudness at the receiving end should be
related to intensity at the production stage, which in turn is related to the size or amplitude of
the vibration (:22). Length is related to duration, although variations of duration in acoustic
terms may not correspond to our linguistic judgements of length (:23)
1. INTONATION.
1.1. Description of intonation.
Technically, intonation is defined as the combination of tonal features into larger
structural units associated with the acoustic parameter of voice fundamental frequency or F0
and its distinctive variations in the speech process. F0 is defined by the quasiperiodic number
of cycles per second of the speech signal and is measured in Hz. The production of intonation
is defined by the number of times per second that the vocal folds complete a cycle of
vibration and is controlled by muscular forces of the larynx, which determine the tension of
the vocal folds, as well as aerodynamic forces of the sublaryngeal (respiratory) system. The
perception of intonation is defined by the perceived pitch, which roughly corresponds to F0
realisations (Botinis et al 2001: 2).
It is interpreted as the rising and falling of the voice. It corresponds to melody in music.
It is important to state that both in music and in language we have to tell melody from
rhythm. We may keep the stresses in a sentence and vary its melody o vice versa, in the same
way as we may keep a musical rhythm and modify the melody. This is the reason why we
may identify a certain musical form as a waltz, tango or samba even if we have not heard it
before. What we are identifying is its rhythm.
1.2. Representation of intonation.
Human beings do not produce sounds within the same range, i.e. within the same
highest and lowest note. There are people who can reach very high and very low notes. They
are said to have a wide register. In singing, the different registers receive names such as
soprano, mezzo-soprano, contralto, tenor, baritone and bass.
In phonetics it is common to use two parallel horizontal lines, showing the highest and
the lowest pitches, instead of the staff used in music. Intonation changes are shown by mean
of lines or arrows:
HIGH TONE
LOW TONE
HIGH FALL LOW FALL HIGH RISE LOW RISE
But it is necessary to state that it is not only used to show contrast, but to indicate
emphasis:
(Only some of the students, the ones who got good marks, are happy)
(and not the DVD, or as an answer to What did you send to John on Tuesday?, or as a
comment to a statement such as So that you sent a DVD to John on Tuesday.
(and not to Peter, or as an answer to Who did you send the book to on Tuesday?, or as
a comment to a statement such as So that you sent Peter a book on Tuesday.
(and not on Monday, or as an answer to When did you send the book to John?, or as a
comment to a statement such as So that you sent the book to John on Monday
1.3.5. Naturalness function.
We could include a sixth function, difficult to describe, but recognizable by every
competent native speaker. It has to do with the result of adequate intonation use, which
provides naturalness to speech and can be related to what Wells calls the indexical function,
when he says: ... intonation may act as a marker of personal or social identity. What makes
mothers sound like mothers, lovers sound like lovers, lawyers sound like lawyers, ... (Wells
2006, 12). Following Chomsky, we could say that native speaker competence makes it
possible to recognize that an utterance has been produced by a native speaker or not. There
are many features contributing towards this goal, some of which are more easily
distinguishable than others: word choice, syntactic structure, segmental features and, most
certainly, intonation and rhythm. However competent a foreign speaker may be, if his
intonation (together with rhythm, certainly) is not the one a native speaker would have used
in the same circumstances, his speech would sound unnatural and would attract attention to
the way he said something and not to its contents.
1.3.6. The lexico-semantic function.
There are languages, called tone languages, en which the function of intonation is
much more important, as in them a melody change modifies the referential meaning of a
word completely. Such is the case of numerous oriental languages, like Mandarin Chinese, in
which the same sound sequence /ma/, has different meanings according to the tone with
which it is uttered:i
2. LOUDNESS
Some authors avoid the use of the word stress because it has been used in different
and ambiguous ways in phonetics and linguistics. It has sometimes been used as simply
equivalent to loudness, sometimes as meaning made prominent by means other than pitch
(i.e. by loudness or length), and sometimes as referring to syllables in words in the lexicon
and meaning something like having the potential for accent on utterances (Cruttenden
2008.23). In this paper Wells approach is followed. He states: stress is realized by a
combination of loudness, pitch and duration (2006:3).
2.1. Word stress.
In a word like mother, the first syllable is stronger that the second. In university, the
syllable ver is the strongest; it has the main or primary stress. But there is another syllable,
u, that receives what we call a secondary stress. The other syllables, ni, si and ty are
considered unstressed. The presence of syllables receiving a main or a secondary stress is
important in English as they tend to be pronounced fully. Weakening and vowel reduction,
among other phonetic phenomena, usually occur in unstressed syllables, phenomena that are
not so marked in other languages like Italian or Spanish
2.2. Lexico-semantic function of stress.
Stress placing may change the meaning of a word in English and in Spanish, what is
usually referred to as lexical stress. A word like object is a noun if stressed on the first
syllable and a verb if stressed on the second. In Spanish we have cases like: papa (potato
or Pope) and pap (father) depending on the position of the stress. And there are cases
like: hbito, habito, habit; lmite, limite, limit; clebre, celebre, celebr; depsito, deposito,
deposit; ejrcito, ejercito, ejercit.
This does not happen in French, as in this language stress falls on the final syllable,
exclusively. It does not occur in Czech or Finnish, either, where it falls on the first syllable.
In spite of this fact, stress position may be modified by rhythmical or by contrastive
reasons (Vivanco 1995-1996) We find interesting cases in word compounds in English in
which stress is significant: pairs like white house (a house which is white) and
Whitehouse (the residence of the USA Presidents), for instance
2.3. Sentence stress.
Not every word in the sentence receives the same degree of intensity. Nouns,
adjectives, verbs and adverbs tend to be more strongly stressed. Nevertheless, any other word
may receive a special stress for contrastive purposes.
2.4. Rhythm.
Rhythm can be described as the way in which stresses are distributed in a text. When
referring to rhythm, Wells says: The extent to which there is a regular beat in speech
(:51). Every language has its particular rhythm, i.e. stresses are distributed in a characteristic
way, so that languages may be distinguished according to their stress pattern distribution.
It has been stated above that stress generally falls on a given syllable and that it cannot
fall somewhere else. For instance, the word mother is stressed on the first syllable and
cannot be stressed on the second. Some authors g oto the extreme of saying that this place is
absolutely inalterable (Navarro 1953: 182-183, Gili Gaya 1958: 32) and that any modification
may bring about serious decoding difficulties. Nevertheless, word stress may change its
place, principally because of rhythmical reasons.
There are texts in which rhythm outweighs other characteristics, as it happens in many
poems and, particularly, in numerous songs. We find an example in the chorus of our
National Anthem, where the stress in the word 'contra' moves from the first to the second
syllable, resulting in the following rhythmical structure: "el asilo contra la opresin". In "El
Padre Nuestro" we also find a case of stress shift in the words 'santificado' and 'as'. In these
two words the first syllable will receive stress. Something similar happens in several lines of
"Volver a los 17", by Violeta Parra, where the main stress falls on the last syllable of each
verse:
Se va enredando, enredando,
como en el muro la hiedra,
y va brotando, brotando,
como el musguito en la piedra.
In "Casamiento de negros", by the same author, we also find stress displacement, this
time to the first syllable:
3. LENGTHENING.
In some languages lengthening has a lexico-semantic function, acquiring a relevance
that it does not have in English or in Spanish, for instance. In these languages length is so
important that we may speak of chronemes, i.e. units of length that have a phonological
value. In Italian, the length of the [l] in vile and ville is capable of changing meaning: the
first utterence means coward, villain and the second, villas. In Finnish we find both
consonants and vowels that are distinguished by their length: tuli (fire), tuuli (wind),
tulli (customs); muta (mud), muuta (another, partitive sg.), mutta (but),
muuttaa (change, move). In Estonian we can distinguish even three distinctive lengths, as
shown in the following examples: lina (sheet). linna (of the city, with a half long n)
and linna (to the city, with an over long n).
In English or in Spanish, the lengthening of a segment has significant effects, though
not lexico-semantic. If we hear a negative answer, using the word no pronounced with a
very long n, we may understand that the speaker is hesitant. We could state that the
distinction existing between the three pronunciations of ch in Chilean Spanish is partially
dependant on the length of the closure of the stop preceding the fricative: in standard
pronunciation this closure lasts 0,07 seconds and in the marked pronunciation (used by young
upper class people) it lasts 0,14 seconds (Vivanco 1998-1999 :1267).
4. PAUSE.
Even though pauses have primarily a physiological function fisiolgica, to allow the
speaker to breathe, they also have a meaningful role, separating units of speech: phrases,
clauses, sentences. A good use of pauses helps the listener to decode satisfactorily. Le us
examine the following examples in Spanish:
No quiero ir al cine.
No, quiero ir al cine.
Una dama, muy descontenta con la frialdad de su marido, le deca: "Querido, t eras harto diferente en la
primavera de tu edad y en los fuegos de tu verano". "S", respondi el esposo, "convengo en que ahora
es "mon automne" ("mi otoo")", de igual pronunciacin que "monotone" ("montono").
Vilches menciona, tambin, casos similares en el espaol de Chile. Reproducimos el que
sigue:
Se cuenta de un campesino que, afanado en cortar las ramas de un rbol, le grit, desde lejos, a su mujer:
"Treme l' hacha ancha". La mujer, falta de ocurrencia, le llev la chancha que tenan en el corral. El
marido, molesto por la torpeza de su mujer, descendi del rbol y comenz a pegarle. A los gritos de
sta, aparece un compadre vecino que, en voz alta, le pregunta al furibundo marido: "Compadre, Por
qu le est pegando a la comadre?", a lo que le contesta: "Por l'acha!". Entonces el compadre, muy con-
forme, le responde: "Muy bien, compadre, pguele no ms!
Otros tipos de juegos de palabras que hacen uso del recurso fontico del que nos
ocupamos son las preguntas del tipo. En qu se parece ... ? Valgan los siguientes ejemplos:
En qu se parece un sabio a un acrbata?
En que el sabio tiene sesos y el acrbata se sostiene.
En qu se parecen una urraca y un conde que es ladrn?
- En que la urraca roba y esconde y el otro es conde y roba.
Suelen darse combinaciones de nombres y apellidos cuya pronunciacin puede ser
interpretada de diferentes maneras, tales como ocurre con las siguientes: Elba Lazo, Lamas
Segura, Elisa Banderas, Zacaras Pica, Coll Mena, Burr Ross, Cristbal Monte de Olivos, Del
Porte Del Piano, A. Petit Ossa, Cea Costoya, Aquiles Pica, Barra Lacalle, Estay De Mass, Mara
C. de Mora, Elba de Carrera, Coll y Flores, Acosta Arce, Ivn A. Cartagena, V. Tern O., K. B.
Cea, Vives de Valds, Elena Morado, etc. (Vilches, 1955: 85-86), a los que podemos agregar Ema
Thomas, Yola Labb, Prez Ossa, Acosta Lazo, Keka Galindo, Alba Cea, entre otros.
Es frecuente, tambin, la ambigedad acerca del sexo de la persona denominada al
encontramos con secuencias del tipo ['xwana'ejo], ['lwisa'kohta].
Como es fcil de comprender, los humoristas hacen uso frecuente de este fenmeno, del
que damos cuenta en extenso en otro trabajo: Una taxonoma de los actos humorsticos.
(Vivanco, C., Vivanco, H, y Zenteno, C. 1997).